Reliability and Failure of Electronic Materials and Devices, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1

An Overview of Electronic Devices and Their Reliability

Abstract

Never in human existence have scientific and technological advances transformed our lives more profoundly, and in so short a time, as during what may be broadly termed the Age of Electricity and Electronics. From the telegraph in 1837 (which was in a sense digital, although clearly electromechanical) to the telephone and teletype, television and the personal computer, the cell phone and the digital camera, and the World Wide Web, the progress has been truly breathtaking. All these technologies have been focused on communicating information at ever increasing speeds. In contrast to the millennia-long metal ages of antiquity, this age is only little more than a century old. ...